Why Children's Books? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Children's Books?

#61

Post by TRiG_Ireland » Fri, Jan 31, 2025, 3:54 PM UTC

miltonlost wrote: post #54

graemep wrote: post #20

I think she places too much importance on this: "British children’s books have often taught other truths – that the best thing you can be is white, upper or middle class, and if you are a girl, quiet. " Firstly, there are many exceptions. For example, Aravis in CS Lewis's The Horse and His Boy is neither white nor remotely quiet - she is aristocratic. The Telmarine descended characters in the later books in the serie…

> Even Kipling is better than the article gives him credit for "You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!" No, Kipling was still super racist, even if you can cherry-pick one quote out of his oeuvre and ignore "White-Man's Burden" and like everything else about him. I think you place too much importance on your thinking she places a lot of importance on one line/paragraph out of a much larger essay. > Three British a…

Kipling is, I think, in many ways hard to categorise. He loved India and its peoples, and did respect them, but in a rather condescending way. And he definitely believed in the "white man's burden". And yet apparently Kim is popular with Indian intellectuals.

Re: Why Children's Books?

#62

Post by wsintra2022 » Fri, Jan 31, 2025, 4:28 PM UTC

The article has caused a rukus. We need to be infinitely more furious that there are children without books.

If you didn’t read. Children are being captured by phones and tablets. Help them escape.

Re: Why Children's Books?

#63

Post by GuB-42 » Fri, Jan 31, 2025, 4:33 PM UTC

joshuacc wrote: post #60

fergie wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was at school in Scotland in the 80s it was a recognised problem that too much of the available childrens literature centred on wealthy kids who went to boarding school. Its ironic therefore that when an impoverished Scottish single mother, JK Rowling, wrote the most successful childrens books of all time in the ´90s, that they centred on wealthy kids who went to boarding school.

Have you ever read the books? The main characters are middle class or poor.

In a sense, Harry Potter is the worst when it comes to class divide.

What let the kids go to that boarding school is the innate ability to do magic. A privilege you are born with, and that is dependent on your ancestry. Even if "blood purity" is a recurring theme for the bad guys in the books, it is made clear that the ability to do magic is like a gene, and if you are born a muggle, you will stay a muggle.

The reason it is worse than selection based on wealth or even nobility is that while it may be something you are born with, this is also something you can acquire, not so much with magic.

Not only that but there is essentially no drawback to being a wizard. Wizards tend to dislike muggle tech, but there is effectively nothing preventing their use, it is just that they can do better with magic. In the same way that being born rich comes with a lot of advantages and very few disadvantages.

The idea of innate magic ability that make those who have it strictly superior is extremely common, and honestly, it works, but if you want a story where the idea is that anyone have their chance, which is how I interpret the idea of "not just wealthy kids", then Harry Potter is not that.

That being said, as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't take anything away from the story, not everything has to be a political statement, and in fact, making a political statement often makes the story worse.

Re: Why Children's Books?

#64

Post by sersi » Fri, Jan 31, 2025, 4:50 PM UTC

nindalf wrote: post #57

sersi wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you're right about that specific dedication to Lewis' god daughter. But, you don't address the poster's point: > The main characters even in books they do not appear in (The Magicians Nephew and The Silver Chair) or appear in only as minor characters (The Horse and His Boy and The Last Battle)? He does have a point and you're not answering it at all.

The answer is obvious to anyone with a passing familiarity with Narnia - the first 3 books featuring the 4 Pevensie children as main characters are an order of magnitude more popular than the others. On goodreads the first book has 2.96 million ratings. Horse and His Boy - 371k ratings. When people think of Narnia they think of the first 3. That’s the reason only the first 3 were adapted to film. These 3 movies cross…

Yes but we were talking about the writer's purpose for writing the books. You're right those other books are less popular yet they exist and they serve as an example of non-white main characters in books 1950s by a popular author. It's not CS Lewis' fault that those books are less popular.

And, yes being the main character of a book feel special, there's no denying that but there's also the fact that the previous poster (and many others because even if they're less popular, 371k ratings on goodreads is nothing to scoff at) could find himself in those other books.

Re: Why Children's Books?

#65

Post by wrp » Fri, Jan 31, 2025, 5:05 PM UTC

fergie wrote: post #37

graemep wrote: post #20

I think she places too much importance on this: "British children’s books have often taught other truths – that the best thing you can be is white, upper or middle class, and if you are a girl, quiet. " Firstly, there are many exceptions. For example, Aravis in CS Lewis's The Horse and His Boy is neither white nor remotely quiet - she is aristocratic. The Telmarine descended characters in the later books in the serie…

When I was at school in Scotland in the 80s it was a recognised problem that too much of the available childrens literature centred on wealthy kids who went to boarding school. Its ironic therefore that when an impoverished Scottish single mother, JK Rowling, wrote the most successful childrens books of all time in the ´90s, that they centred on wealthy kids who went to boarding school.

The boarding school theme may be part of something universal in children's literature. I think it's common across cultures to find a way to place young heroes away from parental influence to allow them some independence. Sending the kids to boarding school is a lot gentler than killing their parents.

Re: Why Children's Books?

#66

Post by grues-dinner » Fri, Jan 31, 2025, 5:07 PM UTC

sersi wrote: post #47

HenryBemis wrote: post #13

> It wasn’t until 1744 that John Newbery published what is generally thought to be the first children’s book: A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, Intended for the Instruction and Amusement of Little Master Tommy and Pretty Miss Polly … The Use of which will infallibly make Tommy a good Boy, and Polly a good Girl. Noteworthy!! (imho) and you can find the book below. https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_a-little…

I really wish the scan was better quality. Extremely hard to read.

Wikisource has a much better scan, via the Library of Congress: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:A_Little_Pretty_Pocket-.... And a transcription: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Little_Pretty_Pocket-book

The Internet Archive scan is poor quality because it is from the BiM (Books in Microfilm) collection, which is expansive and a huge cultural value, but also is made up of scans of black and white microfilms which is a rather lossy way to store book scans. But it made a lot of sense before computers!

The SiM (Serials in Microfilm) is really a treasure: https://archive.org/details/sim_microfilm

It was multiple literal truckloads of microfilm canisters, with 500 million pages of material in 27000 canisters: https://archive.org/details/SerialsOnMicrofilmCollection/IMG...

Re: Why Children's Books?

#67

Post by graemep » Fri, Jan 31, 2025, 5:18 PM UTC

sersi wrote: post #64

nindalf wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer is obvious to anyone with a passing familiarity with Narnia - the first 3 books featuring the 4 Pevensie children as main characters are an order of magnitude more popular than the others. On goodreads the first book has 2.96 million ratings. Horse and His Boy - 371k ratings. When people think of Narnia they think of the first 3. That’s the reason only the first 3 were adapted to film. These 3 movies cross…

Yes but we were talking about the writer's purpose for writing the books. You're right those other books are less popular yet they exist and they serve as an example of non-white main characters in books 1950s by a popular author. It's not CS Lewis' fault that those books are less popular. And, yes being the main character of a book feel special, there's no denying that but there's also the fact that the previous pos…

Its also unusual for the plot of a children's book published in 1954 to end with a brown girl (albeit an aristocrat) marrying into a white anglophone royal family - and earlier in the book a white English queen was considering marrying a brown prince.

I wonder how that went down in, for example, the Southern states of the US at the time? Never read anything about reactions to the plot, but did it sell there? Did people let their kids read it?

Re: Why Children's Books?

#68

Post by philipkglass » Fri, Jan 31, 2025, 5:19 PM UTC

sersi wrote: post #47

HenryBemis wrote: post #13

> It wasn’t until 1744 that John Newbery published what is generally thought to be the first children’s book: A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, Intended for the Instruction and Amusement of Little Master Tommy and Pretty Miss Polly … The Use of which will infallibly make Tommy a good Boy, and Polly a good Girl. Noteworthy!! (imho) and you can find the book below. https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_a-little…

I really wish the scan was better quality. Extremely hard to read.

This scan is in color and easier to read: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015080382503&se...

Re: Why Children's Books?

#69

Post by jrussino » Fri, Jan 31, 2025, 5:33 PM UTC

wrp wrote: post #65

fergie wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was at school in Scotland in the 80s it was a recognised problem that too much of the available childrens literature centred on wealthy kids who went to boarding school. Its ironic therefore that when an impoverished Scottish single mother, JK Rowling, wrote the most successful childrens books of all time in the ´90s, that they centred on wealthy kids who went to boarding school.

The boarding school theme may be part of something universal in children's literature. I think it's common across cultures to find a way to place young heroes away from parental influence to allow them some independence. Sending the kids to boarding school is a lot gentler than killing their parents.

Indeed, the author of this very article agrees:

>In children’s books, including my own, there are many orphans – largely because adults get in the way of adventure

>I would never wish to do without the power of the orphan story, however. It has a burning warmth and clarity to it. It matters to us all, because we all become orphans in the end. The orphan story has traditionally offered a way for both children and adults to imagine their fundamental aloneness. Francis Spufford writes that, among the Hopi people of the American South-West, it is impossible to be an orphan. No child could slip through the net of family bond: if parents die, a grandparent, aunt, third cousin, someone will step in to fulfil that role. But many Hopi stories centre on an orphan abandoned in the harsh wilderness: abandonment must be imagined for certain elements of human experience – our ultimate solitude and our interconnectedness – to be understood.

>The orphan story points to another possible version of heroism offered by children’s books: it opens the space for surrogacy. Think of E. Nesbit’s 1905 novel The Railway Children. The three siblings aren’t orphans, but the removal of their father and the absence of their working mother allows for other figures – Mr Perks the railway porter, the Old Gentleman on the train – to take on the role of protector and fairy godmother. To read The Railway Children is to be told: despite the spinning and chaos of the world, there will be adults who will fight for you.

Re: Why Children's Books?

#70

Post by dmonitor » Fri, Jan 31, 2025, 5:52 PM UTC

GuB-42 wrote: post #63

joshuacc wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever read the books? The main characters are middle class or poor.

In a sense, Harry Potter is the worst when it comes to class divide. What let the kids go to that boarding school is the innate ability to do magic. A privilege you are born with, and that is dependent on your ancestry. Even if "blood purity" is a recurring theme for the bad guys in the books, it is made clear that the ability to do magic is like a gene, and if you are born a muggle, you will stay a muggle. The reaso…

Lots of fantasy settings end up supporting some really bad worldviews if you look too far into them. I highly doubt the creators of Avatar: The Last Airbender realized they were creating a society of ethnostates enforced by an all powerful pseudo-immortal autocrat supported by a secret society. They just wanted a reason for the main character to go on an interesting journey to save the world.

It became a problem for me when they tried to make a sequel that took the setting more seriously. Maybe one person chosen by lottery at birth shouldn't be allowed to kill heads of state without any oversight? The villains who were opposed to the chosen one's uncontested rule ended up making more sense than the enforcers of the status-quo.

There's a funny video explaining why the Disney direct-to-tv movie Sky High is actually propaganda for fascist eugenics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIdbLUm-ez8 The "some people are just born superior" out is an easy excuse when you're trying to come up with a reason why the main character and their cohort of whacky friends have the ability to save the world while everyone else is helpless, but taken to the logical extreme is blatantly fascist.